A Men's Retreat for Growth and Renewal: Our 27th Year [before 2009, we met at Buffalo Gap Camp in West Virginia]
We have confirmed reservations with the National Park Service for Camp 5 at Prince William Forest Park for the weekend Friday through Sunday, September 15-17, 2017 sponsored
by The Men's Council of Greater Washington

Article :: The Fathers I Found in the Woods

As Father's Day approaches, I am reminded yet again that I grew up without a
dad and how difficult that has been. Each year, Father's Day has been a
reminder to me of all that I missed. This year, however, will be different.
As a forty-two year old man, I will celebrate my relationship to the men I
have come to know through the men's movement. This year, I will pay homage to
those who have mentored and guided me, who gave me their shoulders to lean
on; they fathered me and brothered me, and introduced me to the men's work
that has helped me recover and move on.

My parents split up before I was born and I was raised by my mother, a
government secretary, along with my three sisters in the Riggs Park section
of northeast D.C. Throughout my childhood, I saw my father a half dozen
times, and then only for the few minutes when he would appear to hand my
mother an intermittent alimony and child support payment. In my young
child's way, I wrote often to him, pleading with him to come back. He never
answered my letters. Amazingly, my mother never consciously tried to make me
dislike my father. Her willingness to see the best side of things has helped
me to persevere, through occasional calls and visits, to try and get to know
my father.

It left me with a sad vacancy that he had shared so little of his
life. He never appeared to be a mean person. I constantly ruminated
on who he was and why we were separated: "He must have left because
I was one child too many,"
was one. Another was, "Dad can't stand relatives." I made countless
drawings of how I imagined my father fighting in WWII and Korea. Sometimes
I wished he had died in the war so that I could draw some plausible
conclusion.

Only when I had grown up did I learn from other people that he had been the
army inspector general for those MASH units that the Korean War period TV
show was about. He designed a complete dental office that fit in the back of
a truck, so that even the soldiers in the front lines could be seen by a
dentist. A distant relative sent me a magazine article about his success as a
bridge player.

I did not do well with the few male teachers I had all the way through
school. I witnessed my high school P.E. teacher strike a boy hard, shoving
his head into a tile wall for not responding to an order fast enough. The
music teacher was unpredictable as to whether he would praise or chastise you
in front of the class. These men terrified me and I felt their scorn for my
not being so eager to trust them. I often found myself crossing the unspoken
boundaries of maleness. I was much more comfortable playing with the girls
during free time. When other boys threatened me, I refused to fight with
them (which to my surprise, only made them angrier rather than feel
victorious).

While out dancing with friends in college, I wondered at how men
and women could hug each other, even where no sexual relationship
existed, or was necessarily desired. The women did the same between
themselves, but none of the men hugged another man. I decided that
if hugging was about affection, not sex, I was going to start hugging
the men, too.

I spent my twenties and thirties as an artist, struggling through my
paintings to make sense of my father's abandonment. In one work, painted in
furtive cross-hatched strokes, I depicted myself with outstretched arms and
legs running across a barren landscape. My figure, like the painful longing I
had in those days, fills the whole foreground, my head is turned to see my
father descending a hill towards me. Like some prehistoric cave painter, I
hoped that by means of capturing my desire for reconciliation with my father
on canvas, the event itself would certainly come true. In parallel, my early
adult years were filled with bouncing from one unrewarding job to another
just to get by, and a succession of relationships with women who feared my
neediness. Maybe the proviso deep down was, if I could make those impossible
situations work, I had a chance to get the really impossible thing I wanted,
the love and approval of my father.

By being a working artist I began to live in the world of men who I had more
in common with. I shared my first apartment with Jon, a folk musician two
years younger than me, who became the brother I never had. He had a wonderful
way of never letting a dispute come between us. He always hung in there with
me until it was settled. Jon shared all his secrets and was interested in
mine, reassuring me when I became depressed or had a hard time understanding
him. He would pose for me while playing his mandolin. In these gentle ways,
he helped me begin to overcome my fear of being unacceptable to my fellow
man.

It was with Jon's encouragement that I began to see a therapist. After many
years of treatment I came to understand my father had not rejected me, but
that he was a damaged person incapable of demonstrating affection and to whom
deep communication and commitment was just too painful. This framework for
his actions did not take away the pain I felt. How he got to be this way, I
will most likely never know. Somewhere along the line something happened to
him that made the price of intimacy too expensive. Despite my many attempts
at appealing to him through his interests, such as playing bridge and his
army days, he still refused to let down his guard with me. Our relationship
remained entirely on his terms.

Towards the end of my therapy, my psychologist encouraged me to
get involved with the men's movement as a means of bringing more
active, positive relationships with older men into my life. She told
me that I did not have to be trapped in the "emotional disability" that
my father had imparted to me. I could go on to experience manhood
as both powerful and warm. I was still skeptical that I could find
many men as thoroughly insightful and caring as her, but my need
out-weighed the risk of disappointment.

With curiosity I accepted a new friend's invitation to go with him to the
Buffalo Gap Men's Retreat on Columbus Day weekend. Having sent in our $140
fees to the Men's Council of Washington, the non-profit sponsor, we drove
through the stunningly beautiful autumn landscape, and arrived in Capon
Bridge, West Virginia, two hours west of D.C. The schedule of workshops and
events began that evening with a greeting ritual. All one-hundred and
fifty-plus participants formed a circle in order of age. Each man greeted
those older than himself, and then took his place to be greeted by his
youngers. The greeting varied from eye contact, or hugs to a touch of the
hand on the heart. The youngers acknowledged with deep respect the elders
and the elders gave their blessing. I gave and received from my elders the
warm and encouraging hugs I have never gotten from my father.

Men of all ages, boys and teenagers, too, were there. Other married
men, singles, gays, blue collar workers from central Virginia, the
lawyers and doctors from Bethesda, clerics and clinical social workers,
men in the military, blacks and whites from the shy to the effusive,
engaged each other with compassion and concern. I even saw an artist
from D.C. I knew. This was not so easy for me. I kept thinking, "If
only I could have had something like this ten, twenty years before,
how less complex getting to know men would have been by now." I found
out as the retreat progressed that this was a new experience for
many of us.

The next morning, I walked up an open field and into a grove of cedars where
the "Finding Your Inner Voice" workshop had already begun. The leader smiled
as he welcomed me to join the others. His chopped salt and pepper hair and
thin crinkled face beamed a reassuring blend of concern and delight. "Try
just singing your name, any old way," he drawled with a soft gravelly pitch.
One guy in casual dress slacks and penny-loafers and another with no clothes
on at all were laughing at themselves as they each came up with very original
tunes. By the end of the workshop I felt an unstoppable grin spread across my
face as all our voices came together as one, under our leader's tutelage.

The sweat lodge, an introduction to the Lakota ritual of purification,
was probably the most popular activity. The steam-filled tent made
of old blankets and bits of blue plastic tarpaulin was tightly packed
with sweating bodies in bathing suits, in bathrobes or just plain
naked. It was a much more solemn affair than I expected, with the
ritual leader or "water pourer" quite
strict and the heat difficult to stand. When some of the men started
to spontaneously hum or "om", he gave the crowd an extended lecture
on how, "you
shouldn't mix medicines," I am sure he was right given the tradition
he was representing, but he reminded me too much of a rule-bound father.
With absolutely no light, save for glow of the hot rocks in a central
pit, I could not see the leader that I then chose to have some words
with. Months later I called an acquaintance I had not seen since college,
whose name I saw on the list of participants. Upon asking why I had
not recognized him anywhere, he said that all he did at Buffalo Gap
was run the sweat lodge. "So your the guy
that was so pedantic," I chided. "So your the jerk who argued with
me!" he
responded. We had a laugh and agreed to disagree.

As a sometime conga drummer, I enjoyed more the drumming sessions in the open
pavilion, and the chance for rhythmic union with drummers far better than I.

Over the course of the weekend, I listened to other men's stories, especially
those who had been to Buffalo Gap before. An older man, from Richmond, told
me, "When I go into my feelings here, I'm not rejected or made fun of.
Everyone listens in accepting silence, not trying to block me because of
their own fears. You get respect for what you have to say." A middle-aged
man from Takoma Park spoke to me of his need to "face my fear of all that I
have missed by not showing up for life." I felt honored to share in such a
revelation, and wished that my father would acknowledge such thoughts.

That evening, with mugs of hot coffee in
hand, the friend who I had come with and I walked outside the camp and up the hill and into the woods that
surrounded us, to get a better view of the bonfire ritual below, the final
event of the weekend. From this darkened height I could see the thirty-foot
flames illuminating the large swirl of men dancing and skipping
counterclockwise around its base. Their arms swinging wildly about, all
seeming to scream in unison some sort of guttural chant. These are the things
that make some people I have met or seen in the media say are weird or silly.
I found this event to be a passionate culmination of newly-forged
bonds.The strange song the mass of men were emoting was
mournful of our losses, but it was also exulting in our liberation. Many shook
rattles that they had made at the "Ritual Object Workshop." Some wore the
fierce beaked masks they had painted with blotches of red, yellow and black
and festooned with feathers and bits of stone for teeth. The drumming echoed
up to us in waves that alternately droned and thundered on and on. "Go forth
and make a joyful noise unto the lord" came to my mind, as I went down to
join them.

By Sunday, I could see clearly what happens when we men gathered to put aside
what status we possessed in the world, and joined to help each other's
personal growth and spiritual development. It was a great relief to find
meaningful commonality and friendship in an environment free of the drinking,
bars and sports triad that so typifies most American men's sense of
camaraderie. I needed a more thoughtful environment for my male bonding.

As the music and reverie was replaced by the sound of guys packing their
belongings, I wondered what changes of spirit we would take home with us. I
sauntered down to the site of the still smoldering ashes of the bonfire. A
few of the younger men and teenagers were still milling about, poking at the
embers with long sticks. None of them wanted to leave.

At Buffalo Gap and in the subsequent monthly Men's Council meetings I joined
back in D.C., I found that thoughtful environment. I listened to the stories
other men told about their dads, and that many of those at-home-dads were as
emotionally removed as mine. Their stories made me feel lucky. I had
already overcome some of my earlier hurdles, had managed to meet and marry
the woman of my dreams, to sustain a successful marriage and to build a
second career for myself doing home repairs.

My journey--transforming my life--is not over yet, . But I have found the means
to continue the process.By being involved with the men's movement I have
found a place to get some of what I can not get from my father, to dissipate
the anger and ambivalence I feel toward him, and to better accept the
limitations he places on our relationship. Recently, he called and asked me
to do up a genealogy chart for his side of the family. I will be bringing
it out when I go to visit later this year. I doubt that we will have the
heart-to-heart talk I have always wanted, but regardless of his response, I
know it is okay for me to want it. At least I have achieved getting him to
like trading hugs with me. I can now take joy in some of the ways that I am
like him: the sound of my voice, the way I use my hands, the wrinkles that
are forming on my face. I have freed myself to move on to be mentored by
older men, and to father those who are younger and in need.